Steam Family Sharing allows close friends and family members to play one another's games while earning their own Steam achievements and saving their own game progress to the Steam cloud. It's all enabled by authorizing a shared computer.

Sounds neat, but it does look convoluted and complex. I have a simpler system, which is quite revolutionary. It's called physical copies and I can just give them to friends. It's magic.

It's called physical copies and I can just give them to friends. It's magic.

While I wholeheartedly agree with the advantages of physical distribution, I have to at least give Steam credit for providing a system that finally lets me lend to my little sis-in-law without fear of her losing/stealing/damaging my games.

Didn't read the article, but Steam has redeemable codes. I would see it possible to use that mechanism. Gift family members a code, the code is limited in number and revokable from the master account. Job done.